The Scottish Parliament just voted (unanimously) to make tampons and other period products available for free to those too broke to pay for them. It’s a big victory for the campaign against “period poverty.” Now no one in Scotland will have to miss school or work because they can’t afford sanitary products.
Naturally, the fellows in the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit have reacted to the news with their customary good sense.
“Sanitary products” are free, EXCEPT THEY’RE PAID FOR WITH MEN’S TAX DOLLARS, blared one headline in the subreddit. And the assembled MEN waxed furious about this terrible new financial burden. (The cost of the program is estimated to be roughly £8.7 million a year, or less than £2 for every inhabitant of Scotland.)
“Every time I see the word free I know it means some man or group of men are paying for it,” complained one commenter.
“Guys in Scotland, including bachelors, asexuals and homosexuals, are going to be paying for vaginas that they dont care about, regardless of their financial status,” charged another.
“The only thing free for men, is dying,” still another commenter moaned.
Several MGTOW Redditors fantasized about ways to sabotage the program. Wrote not_a_beleiber:
If I was Scottish, I’d buy a woman’s pant suit, put it on, then demand free hygine products. Increase the cost, the commentary, and hence the regulation on this.
“No need,” replied Miserable-Lemon.
If I was scottish I’d immediately open a drug store that only offers feminine products. You hand them out like candy, charge like 50$ a pop to the government and buy as much stock as you can store it. You’ll make a hundred times your investment on a monthly basis
(In fact, the products aren’t going to be available at stores bur rather distributed by schools and other public facilities.)
The-Rover-666 demonstrated his keen grasp of period products and their use, writing “[s]o their whymin are that smelly they had to give them free…”
Replied Legs2Big:
They’ve always spent so much of their time hiding their true appearance from a young age, they act like their lives depends on it.
What that has to do with sanitary products is anyone’s guess.
Non-w0ke offered this perplexing political program:
Because single moms are pure toxic cancer for children it makes sense to let those independent to go their own way and provide free stuff only to those who are willing to care for children. It includes a stress free home, food, housing, full family and adequate attention.
Cant provide for a kid? Fuck off, buy your own tampons.
What any of this has to do with sanitary products is also anyone’s guess.
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Miggies always seem to think that women are exempt from taxes.
Men have periods too and it’s not just adult women that bleed, teenage girls and little girls bleed as well. there are kids around the age of 9 when they first start bleeding.
So, less than $2.68 per year, per taxpayer. The MGTOWs are simply against anything that might benefit women, it’s as simple as that. It doesn’t matter that they might also benefit, as well.
I got the last period of my lifetime several years ago…I seem to remember paying more than $4.00 for a box of 40 tampons. I’d use at least 20 of those suckers per monthly cycle.
Wait, the NHS in Scotland covers prostate care, right? So female taxpayers over there are paying for that. Doesn’t seem like they’re pissing and moaning about it, either.
I’m very glad that Scotland did this, hopefully other countries can follow their lead. I’m also waiting for the inevitable TERF meltdown from the fact that the law includes people who menstruate that aren’t women.
I don’t quite see how this profiteering scheme would work. Wouldn’t the government probably just buy the products elsewhere? Their beloved free market in action.
I don’t even understand what this means. Is he saying MGTOWs should be exempt from taxes but also get special stuff? And how does one find a “stress free home”?
I saw this yesterday. Good for Scotland!
On the topic of a previous post, here’s Karolina Żebrowska (fashion history/comedy YouTuber) on reactionaries’ reactions to Harry Styles in a dress https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roPQKEZK2X4 😁
Excuse me while I just
*moves to Scotland*
Once the pandemic is over, why don’t you go to Scotland and do just that. Put your money where your blather is.
Well I’m none too happy about *my* tax dollars going to America’s number one welfare queens — the men in men’s prisons. But I don’t make a point of going to women’s misandry boards to whine about it. (Side note, are there such misandry boards? Because I’d love to poke around and see if/how they differ from MGTOW sites!)
Of course the men in men’s prisons are often put there simply because they’re dark enough to railroad, while men who are noticeably paler get to take plea deals or ‘time served’. And while feeding and housing a singular male prisoner we as a nation pay enough $$$ per year to have given a person a year of college education instead. (Or it could’ve gone to anti-crime initiatives, targeted poverty reduction, soup kitchens, homeless centers, school improvements, or any number of other places that would’ve prevented so much crime to begin with!)
@athveg34f
The closest I can think of is the now closed Radfem Hub (link is to RationalWiki page on it, which has some posts from it, and also cites WHTM). I never spent time there because it also had some extreme transphobia (see example 2). Ironically, because they tended to sound a lot like what MRAs think feminists sound like, there was a bit of a hubbub in the manosphere when one MRA “infiltrated” it.
I don’t know of any still active sites dedicated specifically to hatred of cis men, they may exist but most of the types who frequented Radfem Hub seem to have moved onto TERF sites like Reddit’s now banned r/GenderCritical and other forum sites like Ovarit, Saidit, and Mumsnet. Posters there generally seem to like cis men (or at least cis men that are sufficiently transphobic) and focus all their hatred on trans people and allies (and occasionally GNC and queer cis people).
Naglfar – I’m thinking of a TERF parody line I made up a while ago:
“Feminism isn’t about hating men, it’s about hating trans women”
@epitome of incomrepehensibility Thank you, this Karolina Żebrowska person has said what I’ve been trying to say for years, but she did it *so* much better than I’ve ever been able to. I hate this most recent rendition of masculinity that bashes a guy for daring to dress/look/behave less masculine than Duke Nukem, ffs.
@Naglfar I wonder if that’s the same site that a bunch of MRAs tried telling me was rife with evil feminists plotting to Kill All Men™, rape all male children, and commit all sorts of misandry-for-the-sake-of-misandry BeCaUsE FeMiNiSm. They said an MRA was able to breach it (just by claiming he was female…???), and he copy/pasted what he supposedly found. It really just looked like the entire site was a shit-ton of MRAs/MGTOWs all masquerading as the imaginary feminists they all pretend are real tbh.
In all my years of feminism — online and irl — not once have I ever encountered such over-the-top, phony-looking feminism as what they were claiming to have found by infiltration. Thanks for the link… it really sounds like what they were telling me about, and the more I read it the more I’m convinced it was a bunch of infiltrators driving the general misandry. David wrote a few articles about when RooshV (remember him!) and other gems told their lackeys to infiltrate feminist sites to wreak havoc. The little I remember, they called it Operation Lollipop… oh, yes, here it is: https://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/07/24/internet-nazis-plan-to-take-down-sjws-by-pretending-to-be-mexican-trannies-on-tumblr-if-they-can-stop-fighting-each-other-first/#more-17316
If we want to talk about grievances that are much more unfair: I don’t think I should have to pay in to insurance that covers Viagra as a necessary thing for men’s quality of life, but won’t pay for contraception because some fucking old white man decided women should bear the consequences of his ability to get it up with said Viagra. Talk to me when you’ve fixed that one, MGTOW, then maybe I’ll listen.
Nah, who am I kidding, I’m not going to. I pay taxes all the time for shit I don’t believe in, you can too. We live in a society.
“I’m also waiting for the inevitable TERF meltdown from the fact that the law includes people who menstruate that aren’t women.”
They really love trans guys, though. I mean, they misgender them all the time and erase them, but that is love. /s
“If I was Scottish, I’d buy a woman’s pant suit, put it on, then demand free hygine products”
Pant suit? Blasphemy! A true Scotsman should wear nothing but a hygine product under his kilt.
@Big Titty Demon
I’m personally more annoyed that my taxes go into paying for stuff for GOP politicians. Trump’s golfing has cost taxpayers millions, the salaries of GOP politicians come out of taxes, franking privileges, subsidies to corporations, etc.
@galax
A weird permutation of “trans women are men in dresses”.
It is excellent Scotland has done this, although I’m still kinda upset their staunch refusal to back Labour has contributed to England’s state of Forever Torydom 🙁 Can’t blame them I guess!
@epitome
I’m watching that now! Costuming YouTube is fabulous.
Posted a comment a few days back about this, on r/News IIRC.
Anyways, glad that Scottish women have that now, let’s hope Canada (or at least my home province of Quebec) follows suit.
I, for one, welcome paying taxes to help provide hygiene products to those who need them, be they women, trans men, or otherwise.
Also, this just in: misogynist manbabies still misogynist manbabying. Also, sun rises every day. More info on the news at 6.
(Seriously it looks like it’s not even a majority of women, just the poorer ones… Because Azathoth forbid we give anyone a bit of a leg up out of poverty, especially if they’e women, amirite?)
There’s a scheme in England; but it currently just applies to people in education.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/period-products-in-schools-and-colleges/period-product-scheme-for-schools-and-colleges-in-england
Be interesting to see if it expands to the Scottish system. That’s a very popular policy here; so wouldn’t surprise me to see it in a few party manifestos come election time.
I’ve been saying for years now that people were gonna socialize tampons, and everyone just laughed. Women merely point to their vaginas, proceed to bleed, and then get special privileges that men can only dream of.
Men dream about leaking blood for days at a time, and having to deal with it by sticking objects up inside their bodies, or sticking absorbent pads to their underwear?
Oh, if only I could pass along this special privilege to a cis man!
I would consider corporations and military contractors to be the biggest welfare queens.
@PoM
It’s about the way which society treats you all like royalty, simply for possessing a (frankly disgusting) biological tendency to urinate blood every “time of the month.” Personally, I would never want to soil my linens with such putrid bodily fluids, but if I acquired tax dollars for doing so, I could see myself faking it in order rob the producers of society (largely men) of their resources.
It won’t stop here, though; eventually, women will complain that the tampons they get in public restrooms just aren’t good enough to dam up their clamato caverns, and men should just be fine with forfeiting so much of their money in tax dollars DIRECTLY to women, so that they can just “buy whichever products they need.” (*coughs* use the money to purchase whatever they want and game the already overworked system *coughs*)
Oh no, not my vespene gas!
I’m not sure what is more funny: the Depletionist’s understanding of biology, or the Depletionist’s understanding of politics, or the Depletionist’s understanding of economics.
Spoiled for choice, really.
Oh man, I would love to pass the crippling cramps, excruciating headaches and bloating to some jerk who thinks it’s a privilege. Much less the occasional visit to the ER when the pain is so bad I turn greenish-pale, can’t talk and my housemates get frightened that i might be dying.
The bleeding part is the very least of it. Only someone who’s never experienced it could think even the lightest, most symptom-free period is a privilege.
I mean, he thinks we pee the blood out. And he seems to be implying that we could all simply choose to stop menstruating if we wished.
@The Depletionist
And what privileges might those be?
FWIW I and most people here support universal healthcare, and that would include a lot of things for cis men as well.
Welcome, have you recently arrived from the Republic of Imaginary Backwards Land?
Do you think menstrual blood comes out of the urethra? Or do you think there’s just a cloaca?
Ok, then no menstrual products for you.
Well, that’s a new one.
Ah, the slippery slope fallacy.
@The Depletionist: As a Scottish man, I would like to offer you some traditional Scots wisdom: “Awa’ and boil yer heid”
Funnily enough even right-wing think tanks (such as the Adam Smith Institute) are discussing just giving everyone tax dollars in the form of UBI to purchase whatever they want, as the smarter neolibs realise it might just be the only way to save consumer capitalism and support their nefarious interests.
@The Depletionist
A wild troll has entered the chat!
1- You talk about socializing tampons like it’s a bad thing… Yog-Sothoth forbid YOU contribute to anyone else’s well-being, especially if outside your in-group. Also given that you say you’d use the system specifically to feel good about yourself for robbing others of what you consider their legitimate gains, that simply reflects your piss-poor ethics and your hypocrisy, which you attempt to defuse by projecting so that in your mind everyone is lowered to your abysmal standards.
2- “Privileges men can only dream of”? Seriously? On top of generally lesser upper body strength (which usually puts them at a disadvantage in physical confrontation with men, which men have historically used not just to beat, kill and rape them with more impunity than other men, but used to argue for women having similarly lesser status when it comes to intelligence, morals/virtues, and even personhood – making any women who “get uppity” easier to isolate and neutralize since they had little to no access to representation, education, military/self-defense training, et al.), they have to deal not only with the inherent risks of child-bearing (which were very damn significant and lethal for the vast majority of our species’ existence, and IIRC only started to progressively lessen in the Middle Ages with Avicenna, and even then were still quite terrible until the late 19th century (and still are in too amny places), but with the painful and messy consequences of having that half of the human reproductive system each month for about 30 years, through no fault of their own. Yeah, getting some help for that is definitely a privilege I can only dream of…/S
(NOTE: The above also applies to many trans men, of course, whatever gender essentialists and similar might say, which Mister ZPG Advocate is quite likely to be)
Lol royalty. Yes being bullied out of my first choice career field is being treated like royalty. Being passed over for promotions because I was pigeonholed into customer service roles = royalty. Guys at the car dealership asking to consult my husband on a car deal is total royalty treatment.
Let me pass my royal treatment to you.
Hey dumbass, you don’t urinate blood. it doesn’t even come out the same hole. are you 10?
What cis men and other people who don’t menstruate all get for free is the ability to go about their daily lives without having to pay for sanitary products. This ability is now being extended to certain people who do menstruate. The horror.
Edit: @The Depletionist
I so very want to know how you think urination works and how you think menstruation works.
@Naglfar
Yes, me too, my example was just directly a “men get this reproductive health benefit covered but women don’t get a commensurate benefit covered” example. I’m sure with the tax thing someone could argue “well I didn’t want to pay for Obama’s date nights, so it evens out!” with the catch being SO many more Republican polices are aimed at actively hurting large groups of people, where most of the Democratic harm comes from oversight or lack of action (not good, but also not my tax dollars directly, purposefully supporting evil).
I hear the whining of a verminous insect. Should I bust out some citronella candles?
@Viscaria
Menstruation is not a difficult procedure to explain, you bleed out of your vag every so often and get your briny slattern wine all over the place. My understanding of this is that it is within the realm of possibility for you to piss it out, given that it most likely exists in the same hole.
@PoM
Are you aware of the responsibilities that men must assume when they rise to the top in society? How willing they must be to make themselves hosts for parasites to feast upon? We do it for YOU, make ourselves disposable for you ungrateful strumpets, who will marry a man, devour his soul and life savings, only to traipse on down to bar, get stupidly sloshed on fancy cocktails (which, no doubt, you acquire free of charge from horny bar tenders and pussy-worshipping simps) and get every orifice in your body reamed out by hordes of muscular, beef-bod chads. When your sex is capable of fucking DEMONSTRATING that you are responsible adults instead of immature, cock-hopping psychopaths, maybe then you’ll be allowed in the “club” you think you’re being oh-so-wrongly excluded from. Men make great sacrifices towards the upkeep of this civilization which you’re in such a hurry to dismantle with your moronic socialist reforms and decadent ways.
@The Depletionist
Wow, your knowledge of anatomy is even worse than I expected.
Did you hunt the mammoth to feed us?
How dare those women drink and have sex!
I assume this is one of your traditions from the Republic of Imaginary Backwards Land?
Weird, I seem to be adulting just fine without a man. At least I don’t post unhinged misogynistic rants on blogs.
Also, where do queer women fit in your model? Asking for a friend.
And which of those did you make?
Yes. Apparently you are not. People (including men!) have the option to stay a cashier at Walmart if they find the cost/benefit of climbing the ladder to be negative. Shockingly, most people find going up in socioeconomic status to be a net positive! Women too! Feel free to stay at minimum wage if you think that’s in your best interest. No skin off my back and it leaves a spot open for someone more ambitious.
I have nothing much to say. Just taking this new nym out for a spin.
@dumbass
No it’s not the same hole, no you don’t piss it out. no you can’t hold it. it’s the shedding of the uterus lining. Yes your a dumbass who doesn’t understand biology, how money works, or really anything in the real world. lol. dumbass. That be like me saying you piss out of your balls because it’s vaguely around the same area.
Hmm, seems like the little trollkin decided not to respond to me… Afraid of me because I managed to deconstruct your pitiful arguments, mayhaps?
Your next line will be “I ignored you because you weren’t worth answering!”
Also, “briny slattern wine”? Really? Now I know your understanding of biology is irrevocably tainted by your mental pollution. Are you even capable of NOT being a venomous twit?
As for the “responsibilities” of those at the top… Seems you’re forgetting (or intentionally omitting; really not sure about which side of Hanlon’s razor you fall – both, probably?) that from your point of view, such “responsibilities” are implied to be in very large part keeping oneself at the top mostly by bringing/keeping down others as much as possible, mostly just to feel superior, which is actually quite sociopathic itself.
And as for women being “cock-hopping money-leeching drunken parasites”… Change cock-hopping for vagina-hopping and you quite aptly describe a vast number of male lotharios, quite possibly more numerous than their female counterparts (the latter who from what I’ve seen are far less prevalent than you believe; not hard, really, when you’re claiming that it’s the default state for women). One of whom is my mother’s ex-boyfriend (SO glad that narcissistic asshat is out of our lives…).
*looks at the Depletionist’s latest screed*
Wow. Failure at understanding anatomy and physiology. That’s quite a demonstration of ignorance and spite, wrapped up in one nasty-minded package.
@Jarnsaxa
I know, right? Considering I used to refer to my heavy flow days as “birthing alien slime babies”….
@thedepletionist – there is a website, with a forum etc as well, that is all about human bodies, sex and sexuality etc. it is called Scarleteen.com.
I don’t think it will change your views on women being less than human, but it does provide information about how bodies work -which is always useful to know.
Has this Depletionist fellow been here before? I feel like I recognise the try-hard, overwrought, archaic language. Unless they all just copy Heartiste (lol).
Did he mean this to sound like a personal fantasy? It reads like the sourest grapes and extreme horniness have crystallized into an extended cry-wank.
Meanwhile, women get on with their lives, leaving the Depletionist raving incoherently in the comments of a blog, trying to get a rise out of people he hates for reasons he probably can’t even explain. Sad, really.
Oh my gosh, he really does think we pee from our vaginas! And he thinks we can “hold” our uterine linings somehow!
I’ve heard about guys like this but I’ve never met one in the wild. This is amazing. We need to record this for posterity.
I must know more. Does he think boobs are made out of muscle, too? Does he think vaginas get loose if someone has sex a lot, even though they’re the same size they started as after you literally push a baby through there?
What about yetis and faeries, does he believe in those too?
@Jarnsaxa
Do you think he knows the difference between the urethral sphincter and the cervix? Not just the different locations, but the difference in function and voluntary control?
@Lollypop
Hard to tell, they all tend to sound similar after a while. I don’t think I’ve seen this fellow before but it’s possible I’m just jot remembering right now.
@Jarnsaxa
Idk what he thinks breasts are made of, but I would guess he thinks that vaginas get loose; seeing as he uses a lot of incel slang like “Chad” I’d presume he believes in “roasties.”
@VP
He probably has no idea what either of those are, given the typical level of anatomy knowledge that manospherians possess.